Do you understand your market?

Marketing is a little like clothing – one size does not fit all. There are things that you need to know about your market if you want to maximise your service and profits. Not knowing these things will cost you money, effort and time.

First of all – what do your competitors offer? This is important because you may not be able to complete with their price, their delivery time or their service – conversely you may be able to do far better. Either way means money in your pocket – if you can out-compete them then obviously you have a market that is waiting for you to introduce yourself and if you can’t compete then you save your marketing budget for better days.

Many established businesses and products become lazy, they sometimes take their customers for granted, or the market changes without notice. For example environmental issues are far more important now then they used to be. Legislation and fashion changes, sometimes without much notice. Your business needs to keep just in front of the majority to reap the biggest rewards – not on the “bleeding edge” but not trailing after either.

It may be that your market is not one homogenous group. For example vehicle manufacturers produce small, medium and large sedans, plus hatch-backs, plus different engines, colours, features and the list goes on and on. You may not have as many different groups of customers as the vehicle manufacturers, but you do need to treat each significant group the way they do.

That just means that you need to tailor your marketing message to suit the market segment, and make sure that your offer is appealing to them. This may mean making several campaigns for the same product – emphasising different features, or different benefits of your product to each segment.

Read the next article for more information about market segments, and let us know what your experience has been.